


Heavy as a History Book Can Be

by perfectworry



Series: Lessons [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-03
Updated: 2012-08-03
Packaged: 2017-11-26 01:02:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 589
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/644821
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/perfectworry/pseuds/perfectworry
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A mother reflects on her time at Hogwarts as she prepares to move herself and her daughter to New England and a new life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Heavy as a History Book Can Be

Avarelle Spell-o-Taped the last box shut with a flick of her wand. Merlin's Movers would come by in the morning to shrink them for easier owling to America.

Professor Sarah Bishop of the Salem Witches Institute found a place for Avarelle and Amalthea Freeman in Danville, where the Institue was located, less than an hour's broom ride from Boston. In Owl Posted letters and late night Floo chats, Sarah Bishop described the Magical community that existed almost out in the open, unnoticed by Muggles amid the throng of university students and hellfire preachers and kids in costumes who flocked to the Commons.

When Avarelle levitated the last box, something fell to the bare floor with a clang. She had already rolled up the carpet, an antique from Turkey her great aunt had brought back As a girl growing up in a Muggle family, Avarelle had often fancied it could fly - until one day, it did.

Avarelle let the box settle neatly on the others, then summoned the fallen object with an Accio. It flew to her hand and she turned it over to see: Alice's, her sister's, Head Girl badge.

She sat on a box labeled KITCHEN: CAULDRON, SCALES with a thud, running her hands over the bronze eagle's outspread wings. Avarelle had kept hers and her sister's Hogwarts robes and cloaks, waiting for the day when her own child would receive her letter of acceptance by Owl Post. 

Amalthea was instead registered to enroll in the Salem Witches Institute. Writing the letter turning down her place at Hogwarts was the hardest thing Averelle had ever done, after burying her husband and sister. Amalthea's term began on 1 September. They were moving house early to give Thea time to find her place in New England.

It was a funny thing, Averelle thought, to be fleeing England for New England, like the first witches and wizards from the Continent to settle there, hundreds of years ago. A part of Wizarding history that Avarelle knew almost nothing about, Professor Binns having glossed over it for another Goblin War.

Amalthea would never sit through one of Binns' terrifically boring lectures. Averelle had no doubts that the Salem Witches Institute held its own secrets. They would become a part of her daughter unknown to her mother, as Hogwarts had been unknown to her Muggle grandparents. Her daughter would never know the simple pleasures of throwing pilfered food into the lake for the giant squid, or the thrill of finding secret ways from the castle, or the excitement of Quidditch matches; Quadpot being the more popular sport across the pond.

Amalthea would never be caught by the Grey Lady with a boy's hands under her robes in the Astronomy Tower.

The memory of Thomas, her husband, flooded Avarelle, not for the first time since she had decided against sending their daughter to Hogwarts. She feared she was betraying them, her sister and her husband, by sending Amalthea to another school. Hogwarts wasn't only in Avarelle's blood; it had flowed in Thomas and Alice's veins, too: the Sorting Hat's songs, the enchanted ceiling over the Great Hall, the starry twinkle in Professor Dumbledore's eyes. All of these would be only stories to Amalthea, but she was all Avarelle had left.

Thomas was the Gryffndor, not Amalthea. She read between the lines of the Daily Prophet. So she packed away her sister's Hogwarts Head Girl badge with the other debris of the life she was leaving behind, and fled to New England and a new life.


End file.
